Epson AcuLaser CX11NF

Bought this Epson AcuLaser CX11NF printer and the quality of the prints was excellent. Troubles started soon after, when the photo prints started smearing. The service technician replaced the photo conductor 5 times! until they found out that all the conductors had a serial fault. The service they offered was just no good and the toner cartridges were almost empty because of all the A4 test prints. Epson refused to replace the toner. I finally insisted to get the whole machine replaced but EPSON refused. An other XP11NF was producing white stripes across the page and had to be cleaned after 10 prints to avoid the stripes. The fuser had to be replaced after 8500 prints ($400)! This printer has disappointed me badly and Epsons support was very poor. No more Epson printers for me!!

We run two Epson AcuLaser CX11NFs in addition to one Epson C1100 (same printer but without the scanner on top). So far, the cx11nf has done just over 48,000pages and 2 years.

I run a speadsheet on all the running costs of these printers. Consumables are expensive, but genuine ones can be found at more reasonable prices on the net (such as amazon), even though prices have recently gone up (UK recession, I guess), black and white prints average at 1.2p per page and 5.5p colour (this includes costs of photoconductors as well as cartridges)originally this was 0.95p B&W and 4.5p colour before the consumable prices increased. Still, this is miles cheaper to run than our previous HP inkjets which averaged 3p black and white and in excess of 15p colour! Black toner lasts about 10,500 pages of mainly draft A4 prints and photo conductors last about 20,000pages (compared to barely 1000pages b&W and 400pages per cartridge for the inkjets). For 34,000 black and white pages, this equates to a cost saving of over £600 compared to the inkjets!!

We have however encountered print quality issues - Vertical lines down the page is from a damaged photoconductor. This usually occurs towards the end of the PC's life (A scratched drum surface; due to built up waste toner, this can be prevented by regularly emptying the waste toner from the PC unit, but its a very messy affair, which is why Epson prefers you to just to replace the PC unit instead).

The other issue is colour printing using Magenta appeared to not print uniformly, which varied across the page diagonally. It was found that the toner cartridge had run out or clogged (no errors or indications were given on the printer display). Replacing with a new cartridge didn't give immediate colour improvement until after 20 or so colour pages, and several recalibration cycles (which is automatic, this printer could do with a manual option just incase this happens again).

Other than that its been perfect for a small office, which needs high volume printing at low cost and occasional colour. Scanner quality is good as is the document feeder. Although I've only had very limited success using the supplied OCR software. Our one cx11nf took a disliking to our network switch, which made network printing/scanning intermittent. Replacing the network switch cured the issue.

It is a large heavy printer, so be aware of this. And consumables are expensive, but their longevity pays in the long run as shown by the low running costs. Its also fairly noisy. Colour printing is also quite slow. Also the time to first print from power saving mode is quite long, as the printer needs to warm up, and the printer recalibrates itself every 40 odd pages, which can lengthen the time it takes to complete print jobs (especially if its 41 pages and it recalibrates on the 40th page - annoying!).

Biggest let down is the fax is very basic. A proper PC based fax suite as found on other multi-functions would be handy for sending bulk or faxing straight from a PC (not many desktop PCs have a fax-modem built in anymore).

Given this printer's flaws, it has still served as a very economical workhorse. As such if this printer failed tomorrow, I'd happily buy another identical unit to replace it with. Although the recent increases in consumable costs may change this opinion if they continue to rise in price (costs of a genuine PC unit is currently £165inc VAT, a £40 price hike from last year, genuine black toner is now £58inc VAT a £10 increase over last year).

Flexibilty for use in a small office - we only need one machine for everything. Black and white print speed is good and print quality is excellent. Easy to use for non-IT literate staff. Never jams unless abused (forgetting to remove staples etc).

Like everythng about the printer but the running costs (approx 2400+VAT in 2 years) - ouch. I'm seriously considering a new printer with cheaper consumables rather than paying for a new fuser. Ironically I could replace the whole printer for £440 now, which is cheaper than a fuser and a set of developer units!

We have had the cx11nfc for 2 years and have printed 60,000 mono and 3500 colour.The automatic document feed didn't work so epson replaced the machine with a reconditioned one after only two months of use. I wasn't happy with this but had to put up and shut up as this was the only remedy on offer. After the 12 month warranty had expired the ADF stopped working again. Epson do not mention that after a few thousand copies the developer unit requires replacing by one of their engineers. This cost £151 every time and there are four of these on the printer. They only mention the following consumables on their sales literature, photoconductor unit and obviously the toners.Everyday we wonder what else will go wrong with this printer and how much it'll cost us. If epson had been upfront about ALL of the consumables this machine needs then we would not have bought it.

I read so many reviews about different colour laser printers before I plumped for this one that I think I am an aficionado in the field.

Working in quite a small office, the need for a quiet printer was a high priority, and believe me, finding reviews that tell you how much noise a printer makes is impossible.

Having compared prices, the Epson Aculaser came out top and I can say the purchase has been a success. I paid just over £500 (including VAT and delivery) and for a colour laser printer that is quite a good price.

It is quite cumbersome and doesn't look brilliant, but it works brilliantly. The quality of the print is good, both in black and white and colour. Obviously, colour prints take a while longer to print off as it has to print each colour separately, but speed is good.

And I can say that it has been a success on the noise front also. For a large machine it is surprisingly quiet, and has no noise at all when standing idle.

On the downside, there is no feeder tray for envelopes and I have yet to discover a way to print a decent envelope. This is a slight problem for me as it is not always reasonable for me to print and use window envelopes.

Scanning and copying speeds are also good, although the document scanner is the bit that looks like its been stuck on the top!

haven't used the fax yet so cannot comment.

Toner kits look quite pricey, however, having had the printer just over one month, I haven't yet had to replace the cartridges that came with it (and we all know they aren't full when they come) so they seem to go a long way.

For basic B&W and colour printing and copying this is a good machine, though envelopes and transparencies are not its strength.